Do You Believe in Madness Second City Review
Asia Martin (from left), Sarah Dell'Amico, Hashemite kingdom of jordan Savusa, Andrew Knox, Mary Catherine Curran and Adam Schreck star in "Do You lot Believe in Madness?" at The Second City.
Timothy M. Schmidt
As 2d Urban center nears its 60th anniversary next month, the storied comedy visitor will be celebrating the hilarious, the influential and the profound satire created on its stages over the decades.
But first, in its flagship venue, the theater is launching a new show, one destined to be remembered as a pocket-size footnote at all-time or a cautionary tale at worst.
"Do Y'all Believe in Madness?" — the mainstage revue that opened Thursday — marks a low point in contempo Second City history. It's an aggressive but ultimately insipid jumble of underdeveloped ideas and played-out concepts, delivered in broad, sitcommy rhythms.
Equally usual, the choreography is tight, the step quick, the music punchy. Merely it's all in support of material as thin as the aisles between the tables.
'Practice You Believe in Madness?'
Topical material is abundant but generally states the obvious: Did y'all know Joe Biden often invokes Barack Obama? Or that Melania Trump is unhappy? Or lots of people have quit the Trump White House?
The mugging writer-actors don't annotate on these matters. They just refer to them, then wait for the guffaws.
Or worse, they exploit a sensitive upshot — schoolhouse shootings, racial killings past police —as fodder for a inexpensive sight gag.
Quick footling blackout $.25 are a fixture on Wells Street, and this crew leans on them more than almost. A lot of rapid-fire humor isn't necessarily a bad thing, but the jokes here are creaky — notions already exhausted for anyone who watches late-dark comics or follows a few Twitter quipsters. A few particularly egregious groaners are delivered by drawling actors popping up backside windows, "Hee Haw" style, perhaps as a way of mocking their sheer badness. But who wants to watch that?
When the mania slows for some bodily character piece of work, the results can be decent. Andrew Knox and Adam Schreck sound honest notes equally regulars at a bus stop, i trying to befriend the other.
But a potentially accurate scene about a woman (Sarah Dell'Amico) wary of trusting her new man (Knox) is mucked upwards by frantic interruptions by a snippy waiter.
And other premises — a dad hosting a game show to expose a pretzel thief, showtime-graders professing their gender condition in clinical language — but become nowhere.
The grating material does no favors to the largely appealing bandage, all new to the mainstage. Knox, familiar from the terminal three revues at the nearby eastward.t.c. space, specializes in wild-eyed nut jobs but also calms down nicely. Asia Martin and Mary Catherine Curran, both charismatic and relatable, share an interesting scene as parallel-universe doppelgängers who differ racially, though not all that much. And Hashemite kingdom of jordan Savusa, doing a lot of effective straight-man duty, charms with some laid-back chill, notably in a solo song with ukulele about being a Samoan who's Hawaiian.
At that place are improv elements, of class, simply none with any sense of innovation. For a stretch, they basically do Freeze Tag, an one-time anecdote of a game.
At another point, audition suggestions are taken, then an absent actor returns to guess them based on clues mimed by her castmates.
Y'all read that right. At a mainstage show, where tickets run $31 and up, the bandage spends 10 minutes playing Charades.
Sometimes a catchy song in a 2d City show stays with you past the terminal bows. In "Do You Believe in Madness?" it'southward a favorite phrase, blurted at least one-half a dozen times past the actors, but also useful for an underwhelmed audience member.
Every bit ofttimes as they say it, you'll think it: "What the f—????"
Source: https://chicago.suntimes.com/2019/11/8/20954217/second-city-review-do-you-believe-madness-mainstage
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